utch and England's mastery of the seas, to
pay a compliment to the Society, and to prophesy man's mastery of the
universe.

Instructed ships shall sail to rich commerce,
By which remotest regions are allied;
Which makes one city of the universe,
Where some may gain and all may be supplied.

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky,
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry.

[Footnote: It may be noted that John Wilkins (Bishop of Chester)
published in 1638 a little book entitled Discovery of a New World,
arguing that the moon is inhabited. A further edition appeared in 1684.
He attempted to compose a universal language (Sprat, Hist. of Royal
Society, p. 251). His Mercury or the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641)
contains proposals for a universal script (chap. 13). There is also an
ingenious suggestion for the communication of messages by sound, which
might be described as an anticipation of the Morse code. Wilkins and
another divine, Seth Ward, the Bishop of Salisbury, belonged to the
group of men who founded the Royal Society.]

Men did not look far into the future; they did not dream of what the
world might be a thousand or ten thousand years hence. They seem to have
expected quick results. Even Sprat thinks that "the absolute perfection
of the true philosophy" is not far off, seeing that "this first great
and necessary preparation for its coming"--the institution of scientific
co-operation--has been accomplished. Superficial and transient though
the popular enthusiasm was, it was a sign that an age of intellectual
optimism had begun, in which the science of nature would play a leading
role.

CHAPTER V. THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE

1.

Nine months before the first part of Perrault's work appeared a younger
and more brilliant man had formulated, in a short tract, the essential
points of the doctrine of the progress of knowledge. It was Fontenelle.

Fontenelle was an anima naturaliter moderna. Trained in the principles
of Descartes, he was one of those who, though like Descartes himself,
too critical to swear by a master, appreciated unreservedly the value of
the Cartesian method. Sometimes, he says, a great man gives the tone
to his age; and this is true of Descartes, who can claim the glory
of having established a new art of reasoning. He sees the effects
in literature. The bes